Data Scientist Salaries

Average U.S. Salary Is Well Over $100,000

According to Glassdoor.com, a career site where employees anonymously submit information about their employers, the average annual salary for data scientists in the United States is currently $117,500.

Based on reporting from 73 data scientists, salaries range from $93,000 to $148,000. Companies featured in the report include Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Apollo Group (University of Phoenix), American Express, Live Nation, Gerson Lehman Group, Living Social, Match.com, Williams-Sonoma, Nokia, PayPal, Intuit, CareerBuilder, Netflix, and more.

The majority of the positions posted are from companies in San Francisco and the Silicon Valley, but increasingly from New York City and Boston, as more financial services companies are beginning to hire data scientists.

Salaries as High as $300,000

“Some data scientists are earning annual salaries as high as $300,000,” according to a recent blog post by The Wall Street Journal titled “How CIOs Draw Big Data Talent.”

In this post, Tom Davenport, big data and analytics instructor at Harvard University, said a $300,000 salary is “pretty good for somebody that doesn’t have anyone else working for them.” He added that data scientists “are motivated by the problems and opportunities data provides.”